The Teachings of Ajahn Chah
A collection of Ajahn Chah’s Dhamma talksLearning to Listen
DURING AN INFORMAL GATHERING at his residence one evening,
the Master said, “When you listen to the Dhamma, you must open
up your heart and compose yourself in its centre. Don’t try and accumulate
what you hear, or make painstaking efforts to retain it through
your memory. Just let the Dhamma flow into your heart as it reveals
itself, and keep yourself continuously open to the flow in the present
moment. What is ready to be retained will remain. It will happen of its
own accord, not through forced effort on your part.
Similarly, when you expound the Dhamma, there must be no force
involved. The Dhamma must flow spontaneously from the present moment
according to circumstances. You know, it’s strange, but sometimes
people come to me and really show no apparent desire to hear the
Dhamma, but there it is – it just happens. The Dhamma comes flowing
out with no effort whatsoever. Then at other times, people seem to be
quite keen to listen. They even formally ask for a discourse, and then,
nothing! It just won’t happen. What can you do? I don’t know why it
is, but I know that things happen in this way. It’s as though people have
different levels of receptivity, and when you are there at the same level,
things just happen.
If you must expound the Dhamma, the best way is not to think about
it at all. Simply forget it. The more you think and try to plan, the worse
it will be. This is hard to do, though, isn’t it? Sometimes, when you’re
flowing along quite smoothly, there will be a pause, and someone mayask a question. Then, suddenly, there’s a whole new direction. There
seems to be an unlimited source that you can never exhaust.
I believe without a doubt in the Buddha’s ability to know the temperaments
and receptivity of other beings. He used this very same
method of spontaneous teaching. It’s not that he needed to use any
superhuman power, but rather that he was sensitive to the needs of the
people around him and so taught to them accordingly. An instance
demonstrating his own spontaneity occurred when once, after he had
expounded the Dhamma to a group of his disciples, he asked them if
they had ever heard this teaching before. They replied that they had
not. He then went on to say that he himself had also never heard it
before.
Just continue your practice no matter what you are doing. Practice
is not dependent on any one posture, such as sitting or walking. Rather,
it is a continuous awareness of the flow of your own consciousness
and feelings. No matter what is happening, just compose yourself and
always be mindfully aware of that flow.”
Later, the Master went on to say, “Practice is not moving forward,
but there is forward movement. At the same time, it is not moving back,
but there is backward movement. And, finally, practice is not stopping
and being still, but there is stopping and being still. So there is moving
forward and backward as well as being still, but you can’t say that it is
any one of the three. Then practice eventually comes to a point where
there is neither forward nor backward movement, nor any being still.
Where is that?”
On another informal occasion, he said, “To define Buddhism without
a lot of words and phrases, we can simply say, ‘Don’t cling or hold
on to anything. Harmonize with actuality, with things just as they are.”’
